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Anarchy Bang: Introducing Episode Nine - Anarchist Principles

This week we will try to have an conversation about anarchist principles. In a forgotten past anarchist principles were how anarchists didn't participate in infighting. We were in solidarity with each other. We helped a comrade out (with our marginal resources) because we believed that it was through mutual aid that we were stronger than those who did not have the Beautiful Idea. And because it all mattered we associated with each other freely (including in love). How has this past sensibility informed anarchist practice today and how have things changed? Do we still maintain the old principles or has the anarchist space gotten too large and only local team principles apply? Has media (especially so-called social media) made things better or worse?

Comments

"anarchy" is the negation of Rulers, of all kinds, be it political, social, civilisation, domestication, assimilation, colonialism etc. which also includes rules, morals, ethics, and a set of enforced principles, if an individual has its own principles to live by that is their individual thought, but anarchy is negation, the addition of such things was the infestation of the reds, moralists, social-anarchists and religious preachers of anarchism etc

Yeah, but that doesnt mean we can't go after people who get in the way, or want to but are too shitty at it to do so. Its why I support anti-fascists.

Some call this moralism. Some, like Aragorn!, have morals relating to their "nice idea" that includes free speech. But really, I kinda don't care because, if Im actually negating these things, why should I?

Oooooh, you're one of these negating nihilists, the ones who don't care about anything, whereas, we're pueer nihilists from the other post, just stopping by to say, WE POSITIVE NIHILISTS DON'T CARE EITHER ABOUT NEGATING THINGS, SO THERE!!!

The liberating value of nihilism lies in accepting and asserting the reality that we take for granted is just a bunch of constructs, and that we pick the values that relate/make sense to us. Not rejecting any values because "ooh my bad they're all so fake!". Nihilism is a tabula rasa, by the assumption that, in the end, it's all for Nothing. This leads to a creative response to this awareness, where we assume ourselves as building of meanings of our own, instead of followers, dogs, sheeple of ideas we didn't evaluate and put into question. Any idea is worth going through a falsification process, only if to see if it is worthy. The insane, mindless perception of nihilism that people got in their minds, that of negating any worth, whatsoever, including self-worth, is not nihilism, but simply being totally alienated, but none really does that I think... Anyways, to be pretending at absolute negation means to be believing in absolutes, which is, well... self-contradictory? ;-)

"Nihilism is a tabula rasa, by the assumption that, in the end, it's all for Nothing."

i guess that's why i reject nihilist as a label. there are some elements of it that i find interesting for sure, but i am an individual with hedonistic tendencies, so in the end, it's all for my own joy and pleasure. if someone else wants to call that "nothing", so be it; i am not nothing. (though i might be close...)

But "pleasure" and "joy" is a moral precept, too, when it is something that is pursued. It is, since early childhood. You're valuing your own, moreso than others', that's fine. It's very... normal. Tho not sure how this prevents you from falling in the same old behavioral/huxleyan social traps of deprivation and satisfaction... you know, like running after a saucage tied to society's fishing line can just make the masters dog out of you on the long run. But that all depends on whether you're fine being a Soma consumer for the rest of your life, of not. And I cannot pretend being impervious to these mechanisms.

Some prefer to attain, such a physical and spiritual discipline, control over themselves, or self-possession. There ain't just people chasing big ideas, or immediate profits. On my part, I've always been in favor of an epicurean/taoist view, where content and pleasure isn't something hanging over al complex condition of their attainment.

Not quite, nihilist life is still open to innate desires and psychological drives, you can't take the Latin literally word for word, the infant is not a clean-slated collection of empty responses containing a vacuum of emotional reactivity.
Otherwise I would not be.

People who are isolated often describe social media as a net positive. Many young people's entire social life is through social media. The "pro tech" crowd make a case for social media being social life and point to ppl that disagree as often times a bigoted position.

1. principles are guidelines, not rules/laws. a starting point for individual analysis of any (all) situation and how one would "ideally" choose to act/react in that situation.

2. anarchism is an ideology. anarchy is a way of being, of existing and interacting with the world one inhabits. while a life filled with nothing but anarchy and anarchic relations is my desire, the reality is that i value anarchistic principles which i try my best to live by. doesn't always work out that way, especially in this world of anti-liberatory "radicals", let alone the state et al.

Notnull's right when saying that anarchists can get onto an opposition movement along people of other perspective over goals that overlap, totally without contradicting antiauthoritarian principles. That's basically what happened with the NoTAV struggle (disregarding its not-so-victorious outcome) and the ZAD. In Italy I've seen conservative Catholic groups taking part in demonstrations filled with leftists and some anarchists. I heard even some fascist group supported the movement. There's an apparently thin yet decisive line to observe between taking part in a same struggle, and collaborating with those involved. This cannot be understated.

Overlapping goals doesn't mean they're even related. That's the thing. Since the '90s we've seen opposition movements bringing together people on *common grounds*, more than common goals and interests. Demos organized by a plurality of diverging groups was apparently novel, back then. There was always a kind of more or less implicit agreement or "social contract" over an antagonistic externality. This is why externalization logic remains at the center of politically oppositional discourse and action (not just that of the Left, no matter how they became notorious for it).

In the case of the ZAD, it was the "NDDL airport project" -at least on paper- even if for most if not everyone the real causes or motivations were something else (sex and drugs lol). While everybody still agreed the airport was something to oppose, the underlying rationale always involved a more specific political and/or personal drive, one that diverts or even goes into conflict with the motives of the other parties involved. This is the main reason why when the police withdrawn from the "carrefour de la Saulce", the conflict that grew under the rug just broke open and became a lasting internal dispute. Well-grounded in each of the groups' respective ideologies, views or principles. So some of us, including me, we were left scrambling to maintain a thin layer of diplomacy between increasingly hostile parties, in a place where it was now pretty unclear who the real enemies were. The closest thing I've ever seen to a "life after the Collapse".

This social agreement didn't occur too much since Occupy. It seemed vague and under-articulated during the BLM uprisings, just like during the failed Standing Rock struggle. It was even more vague during the student strike of 2012.

Also, fighting alongside doesn't mean to be automatically losing your principles... That's what happens actually when you participate in the organizations of the other parties. When a single organization claims the monopoly over a struggle, and pretends being the sole counter-power against this externalized bogeymen, and there's no alternative, autonomous forms of organizing, then this is when you get the integrative pattern Aragorn was talking about, which is basically conformity. Entryism, beyond than just fighting alongside. Collaborating not just along shared enemies, but especially through the same institutions of management... play their social game... be actors into those. This is exactly where the anarchist stops being anarchist (tho this stop doesn't have to be definite and un-doable).

I'm not saying that relying on those externalized grand unifying bogeymen is the way to go, or the best thing we'll ever come up with. I'd like "us" to be formulating together a grand liberating project that doesn't rely on bogeymen, at all, or not at least fundamentally, and even those internalized ones, like seen in the call-out culture. I dunno that can happen tho, or if it will anytime soon. You know a project that has to do with how we're spending our days and nights, ideally outside of screens as much as possible...

I've heard it described as "conflicted space", perhaps one if the better recent examples would be the gilet jaunes.

Basically, when the streets get lively, you're automatically sharing them with a cross-section of positions and presumably, you'll be in varying degrees of theoretically or literal conflict.... Unless you're a shut-in? In which case, I'm heaping agoraphobic shame on you!